


Dan, Pea, and Formula E

by Formula_Tea



Series: Dan should not baby sit [11]
Category: Formula 1 RPF
Genre: Babysitting, Lost Child
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-14
Updated: 2015-05-14
Packaged: 2018-03-30 13:41:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,150
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3938917
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Formula_Tea/pseuds/Formula_Tea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dan and Felipinho go to their first Formula E race. Things don't quite go to plan.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dan, Pea, and Formula E

Dan hadn’t really expected it to be this busy. Jev had told him the Formula E races were just as busy as the Formula One in some places, but Dan hadn’t really believed him. If he had thought there was going to be this big a crowd, he probably wouldn’t have offered to take a tiny child that could easily get lost with him. Felipinho was sat on Dan’s shoulders, drawing patterns into the top of his head.

“Who are we going to cheer for then, Felipinho?” Dan called up.

“Jev!” Felipinho cried, excitedly. Dan had been teaching him the entire car journey here. He was cheering for Jev. Dan had even shown him a picture of what his best friend’s car looked like, so he wouldn’t accidentally cheer for the wrong person.

“Jev!” Dan said, grinning.

Dan had been not so secretly excited about the race for months. He’d been meaning to get around to watching his friend race since he left Formula One, but it had been difficult to get the time to come. But now he’d finally managed it. They were going to do it properly, he’d decided. No VIP passes, even though Jev _had_ offered. No special treatment. He was here as a fan and he wanted to experience it as a fan. He’d _even_ brought a back pack full of food for a little picnic like he’d had when he went to watch races when he was Felipinho’s age.

Though Felipinho _did_ manage to convince him to buy them both ice creams as they passed the van.

“Who are we going to cheer for?” Dan asked, holding onto Felipinho’s hand for fear of getting ice cream in his hair.

“Jev!” Felipinho cried again, swinging Dan’s arm as they walked.

The crowds had spread out a little now and Dan was a little less nervous as he led Felipinho through to somewhere they could see the track.

“You excited?” Dan asked.

“Uh huh,” Felipinho said, nodding. “Dan?”

“ _Uncle_ Dan,” Dan corrected him.

Felipinho giggled into his ice cream. “ _Uncle_ Dan?” he asked.

“Yeah?”

“Is this better or worser than racing like you and Papa?” Felipinho asked.

“What do you mean?” Dan asked, a little confused.

“In reading, star group is better than circle group, and triangle group is worser than circle group,” Felipinho explained. “So is this racing better or worser than racing like you and Papa do?”

“Oh,” Dan said, realising what Felipinho was trying to ask. “Um, it’s not the same thing really mate. Not really. This racing is like reading, but the racing me and your papa do is like writing. So it’s different.”

“Oh,” Felipinho said, thoughtfully. He hadn’t known racing could be like that.

“Here’s a good spot,” Dan said, having found a bit of a bank they could sit on. “Sit down here. Can you see the track?”

“Yep,” Felipinho said, bouncing on the grass a little. There was nothing on the track just yet because Dan had wanted to get there with plenty of time to spare. “Can we have some lunch now?”

“It’s half nine in the morning,” Dan said. “Come here. Let me wipe that ice cream from your face.”

 

Felipinho and Dan were both stood up at the fence when the cars got onto the track, neither of them able to stop themselves. Felipinho was clutching a little paper French flag Dan had brought with them, but he seemed to have forgotten who he was supposed to be supporting, cheering for every car that raced past.

“Go faster!” the toddler shouted as an e.dams car whizzed past with an electric whine that went straight through Dan’s head.

“No, no, we want _Jev_ to go faster,” Dan said, crouching down beside Felipinho to make sure he could actually see which cars went past. “Looks like this, remember,” he said, showing Felipinho a picture on his phone.

“Want them all to go faster!” Felipinho said, bouncing and cheering as another car raced past.

Dan just grinned and shook his head, standing. He wondered if Felipinho was like this at the Formula One as well. The look on the Williams mechanics’ faces if he ever started cheering for Red Bull would have been priceless.

Tyres squealed as a Mahindra car came around the corner and Felipinho burst out laughing slapping a hand over his mouth but it wasn’t enough to muffle the adorable giggles and Dan was pretty sure this child was going to kill him one day.

“What’s so funny?” he asked.

“Sounds funny,” Felipinho said, grinning. “Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeek!” The toddler burst into another fit of giggles, making Dan laugh too.

“You like that?” Dan asked.

Felipinho nodded eagerly. “Don’t hear that in racing with you and Papa. Like it.”

“Excuse me?”

Dan spun around to find two men waiting with their programmes out. So much for just being a fan, he thought.

“Yeah?”

“Are you Daniel Ricciardo?” one of the men asked, offering his programme.

“Yeah,” Dan said. He couldn’t really blame them, and he had expected something like this to happen. After all, he probably would have been the same if things were the other way around. He’d just expected it to be a little later in the day than first practice. “Don’t tell anyone though.”

He took the pen offered and scribbled his name on the programmes for the two men, glancing down at Felipinho to make sure he was still there. Felipinho didn’t even seem to notice, glued to the fence as another car whizzed past.

“Can we have a picture?” the second man asked.

“Sure,” Dan said, standing between the two men so they could take a selfie.

Another car’s tyres screeched as it came round the corner, throwing Felipinho into another giggle fit, and Dan had to bite down on his lip to stop himself from laughing. He was not going to last the whole day.

“Thanks,” the men said in unison, patting Dan on the back before heading back up the slope to go to find somewhere else to watch from.

“Uncle Dan?” Felipinho asked.

“Yeah?”

“Why did they want your picture?” Felipinho asked.

“Well, because I’m a racing driver. I bet people ask for your papa’s picture all the time too, don’t they?”

“But you’re not racing today,” Felipinho pointed out. He thought he understood the two different racings were two different lessons, but things made a little less sense now.

“Yeah, but they like my racing and this racing,” Dan said.

“Oh,” Felipinho said, turning back to the race track. No, it still didn’t make any sense.

 

“Dan, my legs are _bored_ ,” Felipinho complained, swinging off of Dan’s arm.

“I know mate,” Dan said. He felt the same way as Felipinho’s legs. They must have been stood in the queue for the autograph session for nearly half an hour now, and he didn’t even think the line had moved much. Dan was beginning to question _why_ he was in the queue in the first place, as he’d probably had dinner with at least half of these guys, but he wanted to do the day like a proper fan. And he didn’t want to have wasted half an hour, so he was stubbornly waiting.

“But _Daaaaaaaaaaaaaan_ ,” Felipinho whined, unimpressed. He wanted to go back to the hill and cheer at the cars again, but they weren’t out anymore.

“I know,” Dan said again, crouching down beside Felipinho. “We’ll get more ice cream after this, yeah?”

“But they’re Papa’s friends,” Felipinho said. “Why do we have to wait?”

“Because they’re working now,” Dan said.

“Um, excuse me?”

Dan rolled his eyes at the pat on his back and stood. _Here we go again._ When he turned around he was greeted by a pair of girls. One of them stood, dumb struck, whilst her friend just grinned.

“Told you it was Ricciardo.”

“Yeah,” Dan said, scratching a spot on the back of his neck. He wasn’t really in the mood for this right now, but fans were fans.

“Can I… autograph… please?”

“Sure,” Dan said, grinning and taking the programme from the dumb struck girl.

“You here supporting Jev,” the second girl asked.

Dan nodded, handing the programme back once he’d signed it. “Well, _I_ am,” he said. “This little one just cheers everybody that goes past.”

“What little one?” the second girl asked.

“Well this…” Dan stopped and spun around, searching for Felipinho. “Oh shit.”

He couldn’t have lost him. He could not have lost him. They were standing in a line, where could he have gone.

“Lost something?” the second girl asked.

“Yeah,” Dan said, scratching his head again. Where the _fuck_ was he? “Could you save my spot?”

Dan didn’t even wait for a reply before he ducked out of the line to try to find Felipinho. He’d had his head turned for five seconds…

“Daniel Ricciardo just asked us to save his spot,” the first girl whispered. “I think I’m going to throw up.”

 

Felipinho dragged his little paper flag along the floor behind him as he wandered between the grown ups legs. Dan was normally fun and he didn’t know why his friend would want to do something boring like this, but he didn’t like it. Lots of Papa’s friends were here and he was going to find one of them to do something fun with him instead and they could wait for Dan to get out of the line so he could get ice cream.

The problem was finding the right person.

There were a _lot_ of people here, but Felipinho didn’t know why. They were all chatting excitedly and nobody was really _moving_. The further down the line he got, the angrier the people seemed to be getting. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.

He turned back around to see if he could spot Dan, but there were too many people. Maybe Dan wasn’t angry enough to be this far up the queue. Maybe that was the problem.

“Can you two _stop_?” a lady shouted at two men who were starting to fight over their spot in the queue. “There are children trying to get autographs too, you know.”

The lady gave the two men an angry look and picked Felipinho up, placing him in front of the desk the two men were fighting over.

“There you go,” the lady said happily whilst the two men grumbled about “bratty children”.

“Bruno!”

Felipinho grinned. Now he’d found somebody he knew. Bruno looked across the table at him with wide eyes, his pen hovering about an inch over the autograph card.

“Felipinho?”

“Uh huh!” Felipinho said, pushing himself up on the desk so he could see better. “We had to wait in a queue and it was boring. Can you do something fun with me?”

“In a… we?” Bruno asked, confused. He looked around to the two people sitting beside him, but they didn’t know any more than he did. “Felipinho is your papa here?”

“No, silly,” Felipinho said, giggling. “Am here with Uncle Dan.”

“Uncle _Dan_?” Bruno asked. That cleared up absolutely nothing.

“Dan?” Jev asked from a couple of seats away. He looked up, then around at the crowd of impatient fans. “Keep him here. I am going to find Daniel.”

“Jev, mate, you can’t just leave,” the man sitting next to Jev said, but the Frenchman wasn’t listening.

Bruno sighed and lifted Felipinho over the table to sit on his lap. “You are still causing lots of trouble, I see,” he said, returning to his card signing.

“Am not trouble,” Felipinho said. “Have a flag, look?”

 

Felipe was going to kill him.

Dan must have sprinted up and down the stupid queue twelve times before he decided Felipinho must have wandered off somewhere else. Maybe he’d gone to the toilet or something. Not that Felipinho had even wanted to go into the grotty little port-a-loo earlier.

Felipe was definitely going to kill him.

“Felipinho!”

There were tears in Dan’s eyes when he didn’t get a reply. He needed to find someone to go and ask to find the toddler. He wasn’t really sure who. There weren’t any officials about, having wandered away from the autograph session in the hope Felipinho might have been down here.

What if someone had snatched him? What if the girls in the queue were just a distraction so someone could take Felipinho and he was halfway to Mexico by now? How was he supposed to explain to Felipe that his son had been sold to a Mexican drugs lord?

“Felipinho!”

“Dan?”

Dan spun around to find Jev jogging towards him, grinning.

“I’ve lost Felipinho,” Dan said. He didn’t have the time to greet Jev like he usually would. He needed to find Felipinho and two pairs of eyes were better than one.

“It’s ok, we’ve found him,” Jev said, laughing at the panic on his friend’s face. “He’s back at the autograph session with Bruno.”

“He’s with… he’s not in Mexico?”

“Why would he be in Mexico?” Jev asked, leading Dan back the way they had come from.

“Doesn’t matter,” Dan said, wiping his eyes as he marched ahead. Now he just had to make sure nobody told Felipe about this.

 

Felipinho was drawing funny faces on Bruno’s friend’s autograph cards when the volume of the angry people on the other side of the table increased.

He looked up to find Jev pushing his way through the crowd, followed closely by Dan.

“Uncle Dan, look what I drew!” Felipinho said, proudly, only for Dan to lift him off of Bruno’s lap and into a tight hug.

“Oh my god I was so scared,” Dan whispered. “Don’t you ever run away like that again, Felipinho.”

“Didn’t run away?” Felipinho said, confused. Why was Dan crying? “I was with Bruno.”

“He’s fine,” Bruno said, as if that wasn’t obvious.

“Can we get ice cream now?” Felipinho asked as Dan pulled him away from the table. He waved to Bruno as they left, disappointed they hadn’t done anything fun.

“No we can’t get ice cream,” Dan cried. “I was worried you’d been kidnapped. You can’t run away.”

“Didn’t run away,” Felipinho said, his lip beginning to wobble now. Dan was acting like he was in trouble and he couldn’t be. He hadn’t done anything wrong and Dan wasn’t even a grown up so he couldn’t tell him off.

Dan sighed and hugged Felipinho again. “You have to stay where I can see you mate,” he said, quietly. “You scared me.”

“Sorry,” Felipinho said, snuggling against Dan’s chest and hugging Dan back. “Now can we get ice cream?”

“I guess we can get ice cream now,” Dan said, putting Felipinho down so he could walk again. This time he wasn’t going to let go of the toddler’s hand, not even for a second.

 

“Yay!”

“Felipinho, stop bouncing I need to wipe your f-.”

“It’s Jev!” Felipinho cried, jumping up and bouncing again so he could wave his now slightly torn and dirty flag.

Dan whipped around to see Scott Speed whip around the corner and away from them. Close enough.

“Let me wipe your face quick, before another car comes,” Dan said, trying to get the ice cream off of Felipinho’s face with the baby wipe. “There you go. Look a little more like Felipinho now, not an ice cream monster.”

Felipinho smiled up at him brightly, before both of the Virgin cars came around the corner and he jumped up again, head butting Dan in the nose. Dan pulled away, clutching his face as Felipinho went back to bouncing and cheering as one of the cars got past the other.

“Did you see it Dan?” Felipinho asked. “They were racing!”

“Yeah,” Dan said, looking down at his hands and expecting to find blood. “I know your dad has metal in his head but I didn’t know about you.”

“This is the best racing,” Felipinho said, quietly, his face pressed up against the fence so he could see better.

“Yeah,” Dan said, still holding his face. “Awesome.”

 

By the time the race actually ended, Felipinho was asleep. He’d managed to bounce himself into exhaustion and didn’t wake when Dan carried him over to the podium. The toddler just snuggled against him, his tattered little paper flag in Dan’s hand now. Dan waved it with the others as Jev took his spot on the second step of the podium, beaming up at his best friend.

He decided it would be a couple of years before they would be able to get out of the car park, and it would be much more fun to wait for Jev to get out of his debrief than sit in the car with a couple hundred other people. Felipinho was beginning to get heavy in his arms now, but Dan didn’t want to wake him up. When he was sleeping, he knew where he was.

“Hey,” Dan called, waving his flag to attract Jev’s attention.

“Did not think you would still be here,” Jev said, skipping over.

“Wanted to congratulate you as soon as possible, didn’t I?” Dan said, grinning. “Here, hold him a minuet. My arms ache.”

Dan handed the sleeping child over to Jev, shaking his arms a little to try to revive them.

“It was a good race,” he said.

“What have I said?” Jev said. “Formula E is where you need to be.”

“Yeah, I know,” Dan said. Jev wasn’t the only person trying to get him to convert series at the moment. Dan had to admit, the offer was tempting, but he wasn’t really sure if he wanted to take the risk. It had taken everything to get into F1 and he didn’t want to throw that away, not whilst he had a _potentially_ good seat.

“Yeah,” Jev said, not really sure what he could say now. “Am glad you enjoyed yourself. Though maybe next time you will come and do it VIP like I suggested?”

“Maybe,” Dan said, his grin returning. “And maybe not with a little terror to look after.”

“Am sure he was as good as gold,” Jev said. “Or that you will tell Felipe that, anyway.”

“He cannot find out that I lost Felipinho,” Dan said, quickly. He was never going to be let to be the responsible adult ever again if this came out.

Jev just grinned and shook his head. “Your secret is safe with me. Will have a word with Bruno, too. Make sure he doesn’t let anything slip.”

“Thank you.”

“Come on,” Jev said, nodding to the Andretti dining area. “Will be queuing for hours before you get out of here. Come get something to eat before you leave.”

“Now you’re talking,” Dan said, following Jev inside.

“Should we wake him?” Jev asked, handing Felipinho back to Dan.

“Depends,” Dan said. “If there’s ice cream available, I think he’ll kill me if we don’t.”


End file.
